Iraqis Use Guerrilla Tactics To Slow US
US Troops Not Being Welcomed As 'Liberators'
By Douglas Hamilton

rense.com
3-23-3

DOHA (Reuters) - Washington's hopes that U.S.-led forces would be welcomed into
Iraq as liberators bled into the sand on Sunday, the fourth day of war, as Iraqi
troops fought back with determination and guerrilla tactics.

There was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction being used by Iraq in battle.
Instead, Iraqi troops were fighting with machinegun-mounted Japanese pickup
trucks against squadrons of the world's most formidable battle tank, the U.S.
Abrams.

There were reports of between 10 and 15 U.S. troops killed in fighting to secure
bridgeheads across the River Euphrates at Nassiriyah, with perhaps up to 50
more wounded.

U.S. General John Abizaid acknowledged it was the "toughest day of resistance"
so far. He said Iraqi forces near Nassiriya inflicted several casualties in
"the sharpest engagement of the war." There were 12 American troops
missing, he added.

"Everybody was predicting they'd be welcomed as liberators but it's working
out differently," said one senior Arab official in the Gulf. "The
Americans had a hard day today."

Evoking Vietnam and Mogadishu, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf
warned U.S. forces they were driving into "a quagmire from which they can
never emerge, except dead."

Iraqi forces evidently switched from their disastrous static defense of the
1991 Gulf War to classic guerrilla tactics, using loyalist militias to bolster
regular forces.

"There are a number of incidents occurring to the rear of the main combat
forces," Abizaid said at the Central Command briefing, indicating guerrilla-style
attacks. He said Iraqis had pretended to surrender, then ambushed U.S. forces.

FEARFUL CAPTIVES

Despite at least 2,000 Iraqi surrenders, the picture was of a far more spirited
fight by Iraq's troops than some analysts had predicted, slowing the invading
forces' sweep from Kuwait through southern Iraq toward Baghdad.

Iraqis operating in small pockets or hit-and-run raids held up the U.S.-led
advance in at least four places and captured their first U.S. prisoners, whom
they displayed on television.

In grim pictures, Iraq showed four bodies of what it said were U.S. soldiers
and five captives taken near Nassiriya, who said they were from a U.S. Army
logistics support unit.

Abizaid called the pictures "disgusting."

The capture suggested that Iraqi forces, perhaps in small raiding groups, attacked
the exposed flank of a U.S. armored advance which has plunged some 200 km (120
miles) north into Iraq in just 72 hours, stretching its lines of support.

Reports and television images of battling Iraqi units in the south came from
reporters traveling with those American and British units. There was no hard
information on the progress of other units who were not accompanied by journalists.

A U.S. military spokesman told the Central Command briefing there were movements
deep in to Iraq "that we're not showing." Iraqis also paid with their
lives for their attack on the U.S. tanks near Najaf, leaving bodies strewn across
the desert. But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had to acknowledge that U.S.
soldiers were dead and others captured and Britain said a Tornado ground attack
plane with a crew of two had been downed by mistake by a U.S. Patriot missile.

Britain has already lost 16 men in non-combat incidents, with two helicopter
crashes and the downing of the Tornado.

British Harrier ground-attack jets were brought in to pound an Iraqi redoubt
near the Gulf port of Umm Qasr only after several hours of fighting, shown live
on television, in which U.S. tanks apparently failed to break Iraqi resistance.

After night fell, some Iraqis were still holding out.

There was continuing Iraqi resistance at Basra, Iraq's second city in the far
south, and, at Najaf, U.S. officers expressed amazement at pickup truck attacks,
a tactic dating from the 1980's Chad civil war in the Sahara desert.

The Iraqis, while massively outgunned, were also using rocket propelled grenades,
machine guns and small arms to good effect to pin down U.S. forces reluctant
to risk casualties.

If the tactic worked well at Umm Qasr in the relatively open territory of a
port-side industrial zone, its effectiveness could be multiplied on the outskirts
of Baghdad where U.S. concern to avoid civilian casualties would be far greater.

Iraq's toughest troops are arrayed south of the capital.

In Kuwait, former oil minister Ali al-Baghli said the time taken to capture
Umm Qasr might undermine any faith ordinary Iraqis had that the Americans could
topple Saddam Hussein.

"We are astonished that there is still resistance in Umm Qasr after all
this time. It is a very small place.

"If it takes them this long to capture Umm Qasr, how long will it take
to capture Tikrit or Baghdad?"